Bittersweet
by chromeliliia
Summary: She's a cruel temptress that lures you in her sticky games but there's nowhere else you'd rather be.
1. Chapter 1

You wake to the same smell of over-burnt coffee you do every morning, and the same old grungy little living space you call a room. You check the clock and goddammit, it is too early for your dad to be making that horrid, inky, black liquid he likes to call coffee.

The perfect way to start every morning.

You roll out of bed, like the smooth mover you are and narrowly miss breaking your nose, pulling yourself back up to your feet, with more groans than necessary. Time to drag yourself to yet another shitty day of this equally shitty year.

The rest is mechanic work to you, a boring routine which couldn't get any blander than grey oatmeal. Throw on yet another one of the grossly gray hoodies you stack up on, the casual daily wear of jeans and a shirt you express no interest whatsoever in and sneakers. Like you know, the average teenage boy. No biggie.

Breakfast, pfft, who needs it? Not you. Especially not when your dad's the one who's serving it.

A quick goodbye is forced out of your mouth as you rush out of the door before the adult can pull you back inside and, granted, head straight for school.

Sollux is early. He always is though. He's always on his laptop too, one which he should really consider replacing judging from how batted his current one is. You slide in next to him and wait for the asshole to say hi and when he doesn't you do the job (very begrudgingly) for him.

"Yeah, hi I got it, not like I'm busy or anything at the moment," He mumbles out, fingers still working furiously against the keyboard.

"Sollux, you're always busy, since the definition of the word in your terms mean whenever your glued to your old, heaving, computer which you insist on dragging around with you everywhere as if your very life depended on it,"

He sighs and shuts it, turning to face you with a very fake over-exaggerated smile.

"Hi Karkat, how are you today! How's your morning going th'o far?" he pipes, pitch rising by about eight octaves as his lisp breaks through.

You roll your eyes at him, making a point to do with an extra dramatic affect adding a sigh to it. "That's not what I meant nor what I desired as the result, you know that,"

"Yeah but you should know by now that my favorite past time is bugging the everloving fuck out of you and I'm doing it quite well thank you very much," he says followed by a toothy grin which really makes you want to smack those teeth right out of his mouth.

Two periods and a half later of absolute bore the table is occupied with the usual Sollux, Vriska, Kanaya and Aradia. Your lunch bag is dumped on the table with a sad slouch, and you take your seat.

"So, did you hear about the mysterious fortune teller?" Vriska asks in between bites of her sandwich.

"Why would I of? The last thing I want to do is hang around superstitious goons and last I checked, they're the only ones who talk about such stuff," you shoot back retrieving the flattened sandwich out of the bag. "Oh wait, then there's you,"

She sneers at you and casts a glance at a table three tables down from your own and turns back to you. "Can it grumpy, this stories actually interesting,"

"Doubt it,"

"I said can it! Anyway, there's this new girl who's been here for a week, and everyone thought she was some lunatic at first because she's blind yet can manage her way around perfectly and sees everything in colors and smells,"

"And this is interesting how?"

"Uuuuuuuugh! Listen! So anyway, she tries making friends and this kid she talks to lets her do a palm reading, and so she goes ahead with it, and a week later it comes true! Insane right? And the same thing happened with a few other students," she finishes.

You pretend to look interested and roll your food around in your mouth as she looks at you expectantly, looking between her and the ceiling.

"You're telling me this why?"

Her smile falters and she drags a hand down along the side of her face, "Because, duh! I want to go talk to her!"

"Then why the hell do I have to get involved?"

She deadpans at you but regains composure with seconds, replacing her thin line of a mouth with a diabetic smile. "Because, _silly_, if you haven't realised yet, most people don't usually want to talk to me!"

Great so now you're a pawn in yet another one of Vriska's games. "Ha ha funny, and you think I'm going to go right ahead with it and go 'oh sure Vriska!'" you finally respond after some time.

Her smile remains but her eyes narrow at you and her voice gets low. "I think you and I both know what happens when I don't get what I want,"

This is dumb. This is so dumb. The girl sitting in front of you in your biology class is looking at you like you're dumb. Everything, about this situation screams dumb.

"Uh, may I help you?" she asks finally, frowning at you.

You open and close your mouth a few times, yes good job Vantas let's make you look more like a premature spaz maggot propelled out into the harsh gravity free realms of space and time.

"You're new?" you finally spit out, mentally cursing at yourself.

The ends of her lips twitch up into one of those smiles that make it look like she's trying to keep herself from laughing and she nods vigorously.

"Well, new kid, being the gratuitous person that I am, I'm offering to show you around since probably no one else would care enough to," Smooth, she's /totally/ going to want to make acquaintances with you after that backhanded insult.

"Oh, that's nice of you and all, but I think I can manage quite well on my own!" she replies, before turning back to her food.

"Let me rephrase that, I am not offering, I am _going_ to show you around, like it or not," you say, fists clenching. This was a stupid idea, and you can't believe Vriska made you do this.

"Oh? Is that a challenge? Well then, since you're so keen on it, fine! But you won't be insisting that you show me around soon enough crabby pants!" she says, looking back up at you all too cheerily.

And upon hearing that, you know that you're going to regret this.

**Author's note:**

**Wow yeah I'm going to post this on both my ao3 and here, and I'll give note on when it updates on my tumblr condescestuck so yeah okay. Uh, this was actually really sort of rushed because the idea came to me when I woke up in the middle of the night and I just hurriedly typed it out on whim so, the second chapter will hopefully be better proofread and thought through?**


	2. Chapter 2

In a day there are many things you learn about the propheteer.

One, when you don't ignore her, she's beyond annoying and she has the uncanny habit of giggling at nearly everything you say, accompanying her horror movie esque giggles with an equally terrifying grin.

"Hey Karkat, can I borrow a pencil?" she asks fixating her eyes on you, or at least you assume she is because they're hidden behind those plastic red glasses she wears. You glance over at her, and at her pencil case and back at her.

"You mean to tell me that in that oversized monstrosity, you are not in possession of a single pencil," you say skeptically, narrowing your eyes slightly at her. She giggles and her lips expand as her finger traces circles around on her desk. "Nope! Hate to burst your bubble,"

Two, when you ignore her it fuels her on even more in her quest to annoy every fiber of your being.

You shake your head dismissively and turn back to the board trying to make a conceited effort of paying attention to the teacher. The parrot starts up again.

"Karkat," she says poking you in the shoulder. "Karkat," she repeats with the same action. This goes on for several minutes or so before you grit your teeth and violently turn back to her.

"Jesus fuck what is it!" you hiss out between your teeth glaring at her aiming for the main target of her goddamn soul. If she even has one to spare. "Pencil?" she asks flashing a sickly sweet smile while taking off her glasses to bat her eyelashes at you. You grunt and look away. The notion is furthermore repeated until you finally retrieve a pencil and chuck it her way.

The bell rings and that's your queue to escape literal hell on earth. You drag your chair and cast your bag over your shoulder when a tugging is felt on your sleeve. "You're my tour guide remember?" she asks giving you just the cutest puppy eyes and you lament over how you're actually going to give into her.

"Fine whatever just pack your shit up and let's go," you drone ministering the dullest look your facial expressions allow.

She does as she's told and soon enough you've got a girl with a personality bright as the sun in the afternoon bouncing down the halls with you towards the cafeteria.

Three, if she doesn't get her way... that doesn't happen. She gets her way.

When you try to head for your usual table she shakes her head and stands her ground. "Well whatever, seeya then," you murmur turning your back on her and there's suddenly an iron grip around your arm.

"No, we're going somewhere else, " she states sharply. You try your best to wriggle free but she acts like quick sand, her hold only getting tighter the more you move. That brings on your exasperated sigh.

"Fine! Fine, where do you suggest princess?" you flare letting your arms fall limply to your side.

Okay so maybe the back of the school wasn't too bad. Maybe having no company with the exception of a mad, cackling blind girl wasn't as horrible as you expected. Mostly because the mad, cackling blind girl wasn't bothering you right now, being all too consumed in her food.

"What was your problem with going to my usual table anyway?" you catechize. "I got an iffy feeling about it," she replies in between spoon fulls of pie.

"Iffy," you repeat. Is this girl for real? Unfortunately, yes she is. "Yeah Karkat, 'iffy', or do I need to say it slower so the definitions better drilled in for you,"

You drag a hand lazily down your face and cast your gaze upon her before responding finally. "Why would you feel 'iffy' about it," you inquire, sticking the words out to her one at a time to drive your point all the way home.

"Give me your palm," is how she decides to reply, setting her plate down, sticking her own palms out for the collection of your own. "What, no," you splutter giving her an incredulous look. She's insistent on it, it would seem and takes the initiative of snatching your hand anyway. As you learned earlier on, resistance does a sum total of jackshit so you just lie your palm in her hand as she runs her cool, slender fingers over the surface, closing her eyes gradually like she's about to drift off to sleep.

Suddenly she sharply inhales and releases your hand, eyelids flying open. "I can't meet your friends," she says, her lips drawn out into a thin line.

"What, why the hell not?" you ask. She should at least provide a reason as to why she's suddenly so bent on not making acquaintances with the assholes you associate yourself with. "I just... alright I /can/ but, I just, I don't want to," she breathes out, turning her head away from you. Well that's weird. "Look I just, not for a while in the least," she finally speaks up after your long while of watching her.

"Does this have to do with your mysterious 'seeing into the future' magic?"

Her eyebrows knit together when you say that and you may just have tripped a line there. "It's not magic, it's real and it's worked all too well before for me to take it for granted,"

You nod unconvinced and push out an 'uh huh'. Now it's her time to throw you the exasperated sigh and run her hands through her tangled mess of fire hair in an attempt to distract her hands. "I could go right ahead and predict what'll happen to you this thursday and if I'm right you have to spend the entirety of Saturday with me," she drones obviously unamused.

"Ooo this is me Karkat Vantas, reporting that I am trembling with fear because I am one hundred percent certain that I will lose a bet to a girl who claims she can see into the future, an ironic title indeed," you snicker. "Deal,"

"On thursday you'll wake up late for school, and in your rush you'll forget to tie your laces, then again you usually do, and on the way you'll trip and graze your right knee. Then you'll run into class or hehe more like hobble into class and realise that you're at the wrong place making you another ten minutes late for your actual chemistry class," she finishes, with a broad smile indicating that she's in fact quite proud of herself.

You on the other hand are giving her your classic look of 'What the everloving fuck,' because there's no way in hell that she could've made that up on the spot but there's also no way in hell that it could be accurate and true.

It's thursday morning and your alarm goes off later than you had expected it to, probably a consequence of the constant slamming of it against a wall. Oh well.

Checking the time makes your oh well turn into an oh no and you're sifting through your closet, throwing on your clothes in a hurried frenzy before you dash out the door slipping on your sneakers, bounding down the street.

And subsequently landing face first on the concrete giving you a bloody nose and an accompanying knee. You groan and roll over onto your back, pushing yourself up while cupping your nose to try and stop the bleeding, giving a quick look at your right knee before trying to run the rest of the way bursting into the classroom with a bloodied knee, nose and hand earning you some very strange looks.

"May I uh, help you with anything Mister Vantas?" the teacher at the desk asks and when you look around for your seat you notice that Feferi's filling it's place.

Fuck.

"No I - uh sorry wrong room," you blurt out and when you dash out of the place you swear you can hear several giggles coming from behind you. Great. You actually make it to the right place earning you an invisible pat on the back internally and a nasty shot from your teacher. "Sorry," you murmur going to your seat while blindy looks over at you with her widest grin yet.


	3. Chapter 3

You're not sure if ecstatic Terezi is better than neutral Terezi, but you haven't really taken a great fancy to any of the Terezi's that you've seen yet.

You're also not entirely sure if you ever will.

The bounce in her steps as she moves along beside you to your usual spot at the back of the school and you can't help but feeling like she keeps turning every few minutes just to smugly grin at you.

You make an effort to avoid talking to her at all costs since shaking her off is basically impossible. She makes a conceited effort to initiate conversation with you every few seconds, which you find disgusting considering how her mouth is basically serving as a food washing machine for whatever garbage she has in that colored paper bag of hers today. Probably more shit for food teeth rotting garbage.

Everytime she opens her mouth you say a quick 'No,' focus on her garish rainbow socks, and take an excessive three more bites out of the shitty stale loaves of bread with peanut butter lathered between them, while she pouts at you in that sort of 'i-want-your-attention-and-im-going-to-be-cute-to- get-it'. For the most bit it has no effect on you. When you finally spare your eyesight the visual torture and look up you realise that the way her bottom lip sticks out in that angle is actually... why is she grinning at you like that.

"As I was going to say," she continues, spreading her legs out such that they're in a straight line, and that they also overlap with yours. "On Saturday maybe you could come over to my house or something like that,"

"Oh that sounds riveting, I've always wanted to venture a blind girl's lair, it's been my dream since childhood and now you're finally making it come true," you retort and her lips draw into a thin line. "Sorry," you mutter and the line disappears and she's talking once more. "We could watch a movie or two I guess and if we get bored we can just figure out a place to go from there!"

"Why not just decide on a place to go now instead of going to your house and waiting til' the both of us bore our brains to mush before finally making the intelligent decision of exploring the outside world," you ask, and it's a genuine question too once you rinse it of all the snark. "Well because any place that I decide on you'll probably complain about and I'm too lazy to heave myself outdoors between twelve in the morning til two thirty in the afternoon, so, you'll have to deal with this choice because I'm not changing my mind about it,"

You supress a groan and cast your gaze aside once more. Movies can't be that bad but you only ever say that when you're the one picking, but maybe if you could convince her to let you do just that your Saturday will be a little more enjoyable. "Fine, it's a deal. But only if I get to choose the movies,"

She seems to consider this thought for a while before shrugging. "Sure, knock yourself out."

It's 10AM on a Saturday morning and you are in no mood to shift out of your bed. However knowing who's expecting you at this god forsaken hour you drag yourself out of it anyway like a graceful, limp slug and sift through your clothes in search of something decent to wear. Of course everything is decent and perhaps just a little too modest with your extensive range of hoodies and jeans; they're practically all you own, aside from several shirts and three quarters for summer.

It is not summer.

But you also feel the nagging need to dress maybe just a little bit better today (you're not going to bother asking yourself why or you're going to waste a great deal of time on a petty internal argument) and you decide to wear a jacket over a shirt and some jeans. Very classy.

Your dad's still asleep (thankfully) and you quietly slip your sneakers on and close the door behind you before following the messily scrawled address that Terezi had handed to you.

When you arrive the door's ajar and you peep inside looking around for her, mostly to make sure you hadn't reached the house of one of those cat ladies who had probably trained the felines to claw your eyes out if necessary.

Thankfully, that is not the case as evident from the familiar walking cane set against the kitchen counter. "Terezi?" you ask and upon doing so you hear some shuffling from the couch. Said Terezi was now sitting up with some very messy red hair, while her glasses were absent from her face. This of course would provide you with your first real chance to get a proper look at her eyes, and granted, they look like most blind people's eyes. Milky white and unfocused. But there's something about them that you can't quite put your finger on. It's like they were pooling and swirling and that a faint milky blue wasn't the only color present in the orbs. You also decide you're putting way too much thought into this.

She yawns and peels herself off the couch, stretching outwards to reach for her glasses which slide onto her face in no time, and she strolls over to you, leaning against the door frame.

"So you're telling me you just woke up,"

"Yup,"

You groan and drag a palm down the side of your face and move around her, inside, closing the door behind you. "Go get dressed or something then,"

"Excuse me this is my house I will wear what I want,"

"Don't your parents ever fucking say anything about the laid back attitude you always seem to have,"

Her grin falters a little and she simply shakes her head. "But if it bothers you so much I'll go change," she says a lot more quietly, shuffling over to the couch to retrieve the blanket and pillow before heading upstairs, reappearing afterwards in more presentable clothing.

You make a mental note not to bring up her parents again, or at least to ask about the whole reaction to the word parents later or something when she's in a better state of mind to deal with it.

You just move over to the couch pulling out the disks, telling her you're going to put them in, and she says go ahead, and you go ahead and you put the disks in and the two of you sit there in silence while you watch and she listens to a cheesy romcom. Sometimes she interjects to ask about certain parts which you quite happily explain to her and you suspect she let's it all slip because it's the first time she's ever seen you enjoy something. But she's only seen you for about two weeks so not much judgement can come from that. Eventually she yawns and tells you she's tired so you turn it off no matter how reluctant you are to and ask if she wants to go out or she wants you to leave.

She asks you to stay and you would've never guessed that you would willingly do so, but you do. It's around 6pm by that time so she says it's probably time for dinner.

"That's a great idea except you're blind," you point out. She stops in her tracks on the way to the kitchen when you make this remark and her lips cup into a tiny 'oh'.

You sigh and get up following her lead. "Forget it, do you have something instant or whatever, I'll make it so you don't like, set fire to water or something accidentally in your attempt." She giggles at that and you can't help but smile just a little too. "There's some pizza in the freezer I think! I also do hope you know how instant pizza works," she tells you and you simply roll your eyes and retrieve the pizza from said pizza and pop it in the oven.

She's waiting outside at the kitchen counter and you join her in, what do you know, silence once more before a 'ding!' sounds through the mostly empty house. You do the necessary stuff and soon enough both of you are having edible food.

You guess now's a good time to ask.

"Hey, just now when I mentioned your parents you did that hesitation thing that people usually do when something they don't like is brought up," Nice phrasing Kar. Her smile once again falters and you can tell she's looked way. In between several very quick mouthfuls she says "What of it,"

"Well, y'know I was just wondering why," you say blankly. She frowns and you quickly add "But if you don't want to tell me or anything that's okay,"

She keeps quiet again, before saying "My parents are dead,"

Your mouth sort of hangs apart at that and your thought of flow stops for several seconds. "I- sorry uh what,"

"Dead. Gone. Buried in a wooden box under the soil!" she says her smile growing wider with each sentence. But it's a bitter one and you can see the sadness behind it.

You open your mouth to ask another question but she cuts in. "Who takes care of me? My aunt. She works at the bank and she's totally boring hehe, but she pays for my school fees and keep's me alive but she's just rarely around. We get along okay but we don't have that stereotypical close family bond,"

That answers your question pretty well. You almost forget that she's the rumored seer girl who predicted your entire thursday morning and is the reason why you're currently sitting in her kitchen eating instant pizza too.

Once it's around 8 you decide you should leave before your dad brings out the real agression and she agrees with you so you both exchange your bye's and you're on her front porch before you hear a voice behind you. "Hey Karkat?" she calls at you.

"Yeah? Could you make this one fast I'm pretty sure we just discussed that I should really get going,"

She huffs but in a playful manner. "Thanks for coming over today, I appreciated it,"

You hesitate on your response before just spitting it out. "Yeah I appreciated it too,"

"Wait you did?" she asks the usual grin splitting across her face. "Ha! I knew you would!"

Oh shit you should not have said that Vantas good going. It's too late though, the deed is done, and you sigh frustratedly, your cheeks gaining a little color before you just take off.

But you did appreciate that it was the first Saturday in a long while where you hadn't felt alone.


End file.
